Word frequency of synonym responses as a function of word frequency of the stimulus and list position of the response

Abstract

AhstraetFifty-seven subjects wrote synonyms to stimulus words of high, moderate and low word frequency selected from the Lorge-Thorndike lists. High stimulus words tended to elicit synonym responses of higher word frequency than did moderate and low words. In addition, mean word frequency of the responses was shown to be a decreasing function of list position of the response. ProhlemIn verbal learning studies involving recall, the effects of word frequency, familiarity and association value are not completely understood. Deese (1961) doubts that word frequency is related to the free recall of words, and argues that once a word is well integrated it should be readily recalled regardless of word frequency. Cofer (1961), on the other hand, suggests that "response availability" probably would be due to frequency of prior experience. Noble (1953), using dissyllables, found that familiarity (estimated prior experience with the dis syllables) was highly correlated (.92) with associational m-values; and he suggests that both "familiarity" and "meaning" may be functions of the frequency of occurrencl'l in an organism's history. Noble also calls attention tD Thorndike's observation that the frequency of a word's appearance in writing is positively correlated with the number of synonyms for that word in the English language.The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the telationship between the word frequency of both the stimuius and the response in a synonym recall situation. It was hypothesized that the higher the word frequency of the stimulus word, the higher the word frequency of the synonyms that would be elicited. It was further hypothesized that mean word frequency of the synonym responses would be a decreasing function of list poSition, Le., initial synonym responses to a given stimulus word would be of higher mean word frequency than would later responses. MethodFifty-seven students enrolled in an educational psychology class comprised the sample.Nine stimulus words were obtained from the LorgeThorndike (1944) list. Three Hi stimulus words (seem, ship, high) occurred more than 100 times in one million. Three Mod stimulus words (hasten, jewel, steep) occurred 40-41 times per million. Three Lo stimulus words (invest, operator, pinch) occurred less than 20 times per million. Subjects were given a booklet containing the nine stimulus words, each on a separate page, and attempted to write as many synonyms as possible during the standard 2-min. interval allowed to each word. In order to minimize associative chaining of responses, each stimulus word was reproduced 15 times on the page with a space provided under each word for the subject's response.The synonym responses to each word were assigned a "word frequency" score based on the Lorge-Thorndike counts, using the following Results and Discussion 1-24o or lower

Why Do Word Blends with Near-Synonymous Composites Exist and Persist? The Case of Guesstimate, Chillax, Ginormous and Confuzzled

“…Participants were less confi dent in individuals who used the word guesstimate in comparison to estimate; however, this diff erence was not pronounced enough to be statistically signifi cant and was the only diff erence identifi ed. It seems to be of value to have many words with semantically similar synonyms to bett er articulate oneself when communicating (Hicklin, 1930;Johnson et al, 1965) and the current results are somewhat complimentary to Edmonds and Hirst (2002) and Fleck (2006) who argue that despite similar semantic qualities, very subtle semantic diff erences are likely to exist, and may be of practical consequence. Th e current results also reinforce the importance of exploring each word blend individually with respect to its composites, and not making universal assumptions, e.g.…”

“…Synonyms increase the number of words available to communicate a topic with (Johnson, Meinke, Van Mondfrans, & Finn, 1965) and can be of value in diverse ways, e.g. for newspaper editors' snappy headlines (Hicklin, 1930).…”